Tag Archives: XCOR Aerospace

XCOR engine testing

UK Lottery Competition In Partnership With XCOR

Only earlier this month we wrote about Virgin Galactic teaming up with NBC for a new TV show with the top price being a space flight, when we noticed this competition published in a UK newspaper:

In summary, the competition which closes at midnight this Sunday coming requires you to enter your details together with a valid number for a draw entry of up to next Wednesday. If you are feeling lucky, there won’t be a better time to play than the present!

“One lucky reader will embark on the journey of a lifetime as they head for the final frontier with commercial Space travel experts XCOR Aerospace. The winner will travel in the Lynx Mark I spacecraft (pictured) sitting alongside the pilot for the duration of the trip, and will experience an exhilarating rocket ride to Space, out-of-this-world views and the feeling of weightlessness. They will join a small and privileged few who have looked back on planet earth.

The winner will also receive £5,000 from The National Lottery which can be used towards any costs incurred by the winner relating to the prize, and prior to the flight, the winner will go through a screening and training process, including g-force training, to ensure that they are fit and ready for their epic adventure.”

Good luck to all participants. Let us know if you win!

Astronaut in space

How to get hired by a spaceline

As is becoming more obvious every day to those reading up on the latest in space travel, humanity will soon enter a new era. The day a friend or family member will be sitting at the dinner table, talking about how an acquaintance flew into space with one of these entrepreneurial companies will not be as far of as you might think. But how does the younger generation get to work for one of these groundbreaking start-ups (and let’s not rule out the likes of Lockheed Martin and Boeing who have their own projects on the go too)? Queue William Pomerantz, Virgin Galactic‘s Vice President for Special Projects who did an interview for EngineeringBecause (a social network for engineering students) which you can read in its entirety here. What you should take away from this is that this is not just a dream anymore. You could in fact apply to work on building a spaceship, right now!

“If you are early in your career and looking for your first job, you have an unprecedented level of choice about what kinds of projects to work on, what type of working environment to work in et cetera”, Pomerantz says, and he is absolutely right. If you are an engineer or technician (and are willing and able to relocate to the US in most cases) who thinks they should be a part of creating one of the first private spaceships, check out the links below and start applying! The Enterprise did not build itself you know…

Career links for (in alphabetical order – feel free to submit additional companies):

Blue Origin: http://www.blueorigin.com/careers/

Orbital Sciences Corporation: http://www.orbital.com/Careers/

Lockheed Martin: http://www.lockheedmartinjobs.com/index.aspx

Reaction Engines: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/careers.html

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/careers

Virgin Galactic: http://www.virgingalactic.com/careers/

XCOR Aerospace: http://www.xcor.com/jobs/

Another fact to observe from the above career boards: you don’t actually have to be an engineer or technician to work for one of the coolest companies in the world. XCOR is hiring a HR Manager currently, while Virgin Galactic is hiring an Executive Assistant, SpaceX has many Intern positions open and several companies amongst them positions related to Business or Program Management open. Engage!

XCOR Aerospace Lynx Mark III

XCOR Aerospace

Looking at the near-future, we can safely start saying that the second half of this decade will see the rise of a new industry: space tourism. One of the companies that will do battle in this arena is XCOR Aerospace, a small American private rocket engine and spaceflight development company originally based at the Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, California. Its story starts in 1999, when four employees of Rotary Rocket’s rocket engine development team got laid off and decided that as they knew how to build rockets, they should have a shot at doing it themselves. Why should you pay attention to these guys? Well for one, they’ve got Buzz Aldrin on their side as you can see in this promotional campaign below by Unilever.

The Mojave Spaceport by the way is close by Edwards Air Force base, where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Aside from Aldrin, they are going about it a whole different way. Forget booster rockets and secondary launch vehicles. XCOR‘s Lynx looks like a mini-Learjet, but unlike a Learjet, this tiny reusable space ship can take off and travel to space all by itself. It is the company’s plan to do this four times a day, six days a week, which would allow XCOR to accept passengers, space experiments, and small satellites for deployment on just two days’ notice! An impressive feat if they can deliver on it.

The experience will be quite different from what Virgin Galactic is offering, as you’ll stay strapped into your seat in a pressure suit and it will just be you and the pilot (unlike the latter where you will be one of six paying customers, albeit not in a cockpit seat) but Rick Searfoss, XCor Chief Test Pilot and former NASA astronaut with three shuttle missions under his belt, says “We’re trying to position the Lynx adventure as kind of The Right Stuff experience.

In terms of a schedule, we haven’t seen a date yet as to when the first paying customers will be able to fulfil their dream. XCOR‘s CEO Jeff Greason at one point mentioned that they are in “the homestretch toward the first flight” but that the process can’t be rushed. “We’re not an industry that can ship beta.” In another recent development, XCOR moved announced it would move its operations and research to Texas where it has been promised $10 million in economic-development incentives and a more relaxed regulatory regime. The corporate website still says California, so surely a TBC soon.

 

Cost Of Space Travel

The Cost Of Space Travel, As Virgin Galactic Ups Prices…

Space travel will become a reality soon, so let’s have a look at what it would cost to, even for a brief moment, go above 100km (where space officially starts) and become an astronaut.

Virgin Galactic‘s WhiteKnightTwo airplane will carry SpaceShipTwo with two pilots and six passengers to an altitude of 16 km (or 50.000 feet), where SpaceShipTwo is released and its rocket engine fires to take it up to 110km. As if $200.000 per person wasn’t enough to get a seat in one of the SpaceShipTwo ships though, the price recently went up to $250.000. So what is the alternative for the less fortunate amongst us?

Well, there is XCOR Aerospace‘s Lynx which would get you into space for $95.000 and you can book (and check out the video) here. It would just be you and the pilot experiencing a half-hour suborbital flight to 100 km (330,000 feet) and then returning to a landing at the takeoff runway, but for less than half the price of a ticket aboard Virgin Galactic‘s SpaceShipTwo it sounds like value for money. With a fast turnaround time (they don’t use any separate launch vehicle – as it is basically a cutting edge plane that does the whole trip from the ground to suborbit by itself using only rocket engines), they are looking at launching four flights a day meaning you could still take the family out for a nice day out.

Starchaser Industries offers a seat to anyone able to cough up £98.000 (currently around $150.000), + VAT (slap another 20% on top of that basically) and seems to take things in two stages. Their first approach will consist of a 3 person reusable space capsule called Thunderstar which will be launched on top of their own Starchaser 5 rocket. Stage 2 of their plans will feature  an 8-seater spaceplane that will take off vertically on a modified version of said rocket. You can check out more info here, but as their news is 2+ years outdated, perhaps this one bit the dust already.

Next time, we’ll look at SpaceX‘s Dragon capsule and many more. Stay tuned!